Before their fateful match on behalf of the U20 World Cup semi-finals, English coach Mo Marley and Japanese coach Ikeda Futoshi answered questions from reporters, accompanied by one of their players, Niamh Charles and Nagano Fuka.

What is your feeling about the match?
Player Japan - Nagano Fuka: First of all we are very happy to have arrived so far, it is already very important to have arrived in half and we would like to win this half to go to the final is our dream.

What is your strategy for tomorrow for this semifinal?
Coach Japan - Ikeda Futoshi: We had two days since the quarters to prepare ourselves and yesterday we rested and we will be ready for tomorrow to face England.

English Coach - Mo Marley: We know this is our first half qualification and as you can imagine we are very happy. It gives us a lot of energy, we focus on the half and we are very happy to be there. Our preparation was quite important, just like our previous matches and we had to rest to be able to train and do the maximum for the match that awaits us [against Japan].

Two good teams in attack, the defense will be important to place?
Coach Japan - Ikeda Futoshi: For defense this is a question that should not be overlooked, England has to show that she had a very fast team.

English Coach - Mo Marley: It's a good strategy, we want to get to the finals, we know it's the capacity of the Japan team, we have to do what we've done so far, how to score goals and how we did it. The higher you go the higher the level becomes important. Discipline is important in this level and allows us to respect the opponent.

Journalist - Have you played against Japan before, do you think it will help you tomorrow?
English Coach - Mo Marley: It was important to play against Asian teams, we have been training for several years, and we are doing everything to adapt to the opponent's game. Japan was stronger than us and we came back to England to rework and have a solid foundation, improve ourselves to get to the same level.

English player - Niamh Charles: It's important for us to see the different opponents, to test ourselves, and to know how we will be able to manage our opponent, and it was important to see for us their style of football [Asians].

Journalist - Germany is gone, Korea, the United States ... Who will be the champion?
Coach Japan - Ikeda Futoshi: As far as I'm concerned, it's hard to answer this question, all the teams that went are very good and the last four teams are very good. We will do our best to win, but we must not kill the skin of the bear, before killing it.

English Coach - There were 5 European teams, and now at this final stage we will be representing Europe as much as possible [against Japan]. But it's hard to say who will win the tournament, there is not a more dominant team, and it's too early to say, but we would like to be the one who won [the final].

Journalist - The match against Japan
English coach: They won the friendly match, and we analyzed that with the different parties regarding this issue. There have been a lot of changes, and many of our players have never played against teams that were not European. It is important to be confronted by other teams and it was a good preparation for our world. We know how they won and we needed to have the best position to play this world.

Reporter - This is your first semifinal. How important is it to play this final?
English Coach: I think we've demonstrated our abilities, we've got pretty mature players, and we've thought about how we played and both teams played the best they could [to qualify in half]. They have a tradition to keep the ball. The two teams will have to see who will be able to use the ball better, how we will defend our part of the field etc. We will be very happy to see who will be the best tomorrow (Monday 20th of August ed).

Journalist - The senior men's team also qualified in the semi-finals at the 2018 World Cup. Are you inspired by their career, this energy for this U20 World?
English player: For us it's important of course, it's a source of inspiration for players our age and it gives us extra motivation, but we are in our bubble and we focus on what we has to do.

Reporter - You scored a lot of goals and had a lot of chances to win in the last two weeks?
Coach Japan: I think we can be satisfied with the results and that's important, we scored 4 goals, we did not do anything extraordinary, we did our best, but there are always improvements to bring.

Player Japan: I would say we did the maximum in training and as the coach said, we were able to play through the good practice and the different training we had with him.

Journalist - Did you practice penaltys?
English coach: This is important for the game and we have done the maximum preparation in recent years compared to that.

Coach Japan: This is important and we have prepared this eventuality.

Dounia MESLI